Just for the fact that they would eventually turn out to be among the most powerful beings in Marvel, Wanda especially, Kal saved the Maximoff twins and brought them with him after he cleared the full HYDRA base. Only after that did he give Fury a call for the cleanup.
Of course, the master spy was still busy with the cleanup for the battle of New York, but the elf was tired of Nick Fury dragging his feet. Now that the nest has been poked, Fury has to pick up the speed a little.
Well, without the intel of the dead Baron von Strucker and Doctor List, whom the High Exarch abducted to find the items Strucker made disappear, Fury had his work cut out for him with just dead HYDRA agents everywhere.
"Where are you taking us?" Pietro asked as Wanda warily looked at the elf who just killed all the present HYDRA agents casually - even those the twins pointed to among the other human experimentation subjects who survived.
"Outside?" Kal asked with an unconscious Doctor List slung over his shoulder.
"And then?" Pietro reiterated curtly.
"Nothing. My grudge was with the satyr and HYDRA. You can do whatever you want. My powers cleansed the demonification," Kal explained and patted Pietro's shoulder with his free hand.
[Individual with unearthed potential detected: Focus to initiate power awakening]
[Talent for the class system will be analyzed and ranked in order of compatibility]
[Talent recognised for: Demon Hunter, Rogue, Hunter, Warrior, Death Knight]
"Huh, would you look at that," Kal said in Thalassian. "I wondered how this would work..."
"What are you saying?" Pietro guardedly inquired as they tried to take a step back.
"Do you want powers? Powers to help you protect your sister?"
"No thanks, whatever you're selling, I'm not buying," Pietro immediately denied. He was still burnt from whatever Strucker had tried to put him through.
"And you?" Kal asked as he looked at Wanda, still hiding behind Pietro and giving the situation a calculating look.
"What will it cost?" Wanda asked warily.
Kal looked at the Mind Stone in his bracelet and looked back up to say, "Nothing. Just don't use these powers to terrorize the innocent."
Looking at him with worry and a bit of determination, she nodded.
With that, Kal reached out to place his hand on Wanda's head.
[Individual with unearthed potential detected: Focus to initiate power awakening]
[Talent recognised for: Demon Hunter, Mage, Warlock, Priest]
Wanda's eyes started shining in a red and golden yellow light as Pietro hurriedly tried to free his sister - but a single look from Kal stopped him. Well, that and the paladin skill 'Repentance'.
Five minutes later, Kal released his hand and looked at Wanda with narrowed eyes.
Her transformation was palpable and immediate: her hair turned a little more red, and her eyes brimmed with power. She grew almost half a head as her figure filled in with tight muscles.
What Kal, however, didn't like about this whole process immediately was that he couldn't decide what class or specialization he taught these 'individuals with potential'… that threw a wrench in all his plans for now - but the elf would only have to talk with his potential recruits later on to help them decide, if possible. The plan only changed, it did not stop entirely.
"There's text in my vision now," Wanda described with a frown.
"What does it say when you concentrate on it?" Kal asked in surprise. Apparently, passing on a 'warcraft class' included the same chat box he saw in his vision.
"I gained 'partial profiles' for havoc, fire, arcane, and destruction? And I'm... level 10?" Wanda unsurely read out before she looked at Kal.
"You were allowed to pick three classes and pick two specializations from the mage class?" Kal asked with a raised brow. "How did you choose? Did you get the chance to choose?"
"The knowledge of the classes and the spells appeared in my mind and I... reached out," Wanda explained with scrunched up eyebrows. Putting the experience into words was hard.
As a small fireball appeared in Wanda's hand, she looked at her twin brother with a smirk.
"You should agree," she ordered Pietro, who looked at the fireball enviously.
Swallowing some spit, the young Sokovian turned to Kal once more, and with a nod of agreement from the future speedster, the elf placed his hand on Pietro's greying hair.
The same thing that happened with Wanda happened with Pietro. The tips of his hair turned silver as his eyes gained a blue… almost electrified hue.
"Now, what are you?" Kal asked when the transformation that took a little less time than with Wanda was over.
"Uh, I gained the partial profiles for havoc, subtlety, assassination, and... fury? And I'm level 8. Hey, why am I level 8 and not 10 like my sister?" Pietro explained before he indignantly turned to Wanda.
"Three classes and four specializations again? Is it because the twins are special? Is it because of the satyr blood that they were given the chance to become demon hunters?" Kal mumbled to himself in Thalassian.
"Hey, the text says I'm learning Thalassian? It even comes with a progress bar. 0.008% it says," Wanda asked and brought Kal out of his musings as the two Maximoff twins looked at him in guarded anticipation.
"It is the language of my civilization. Thalassian and Darnassian both are. I have no idea why this power would help you learn it. In this world, I am the only one who speaks it to my knowledge," Kal explained and summoned his mount.
After thinking about it, Kal threw a Stark phone at the two before getting on its back. When Pietro caught it in a ridiculously fast movement that surprised all three conscious people looking on, Kal instructed, "Try calling Whitewing. It's the contact for my second phone. If you need help, reach out. And remember. No terrorizing the innocent."
Helping Pietro unlock the phone, Kal made sure they could use it to reach him. Pietro did, however, keep sending a frown at the Stark logo on the phone.
"Tony Stark is not your enemy. He might have designed the rocket that hit your home. But it was not him who sold those missiles, shot them, or cleared the shipment to the rebels in the first place... he didn't even benefit from it in any way. Make up your own mind about it if you must, but the ones you're cross with are the deceased Obadiah Stane and the HYDRA influenced dissidents who wanted there to be civil war here for their own gain," the elf said in an almost disinterested voice as he swung his leg up to mount his warhorse after throwing Doctor List on it.
— — —
Over a year had passed since the invasion of New York and Kal found his first traces of the Burning Legion on Earth. It was now September 2013.
Loki and Thor were gone and took the Tesseract with them, so Kal could not take the Space Stone without making the heroes of the world his enemies.
Doctor List did know of several hidden caches of Baron von Strucker, but no ancient alien obelisk was among the items Kal all but looted. So in Kal's mind, there were neither Inhumans nor X-Men in this weird MCU alternate universe. Not for now, anyway.
But there were still three wildly popular spider people with plenty of their original comic book villains hanging around in New York. Though, no Symbiote made its way into the news as of yet.
The Fantastic Four were real, too, but did not yet have power. Even the Defenders existed and that was where Kal currently was. With Frank Castle. The man's moral compass from what the elf remembered was the closest one aligned to his own, so he had Tony loan him the AI F.R.I.D.A.Y. to monitor the man without reporting back to anybody but the other AI, J.A.R.V.I.S.
Unsure of when the main antagonists of the MCU Punisher series go after Frank and his family, Kal wanted to be close to the 'painted horses' where it would all happen. The day Castle loses his family in a staged gang fight because he knew too much.
Kal's plan was to save Frank's family and offer the man the power to become a retribution paladin. The lightforged elf had high hopes that Castle would be one of the strongest retribution paladins this world could produce with his guidance.
When the family of four plus the future villain and current friend of the family Billy Russo, whose name Kal found out with the AI's help, left Central Park without incident, Kal picked up his phone to call one of the people he gave powers to this past year.
"*Kal, what can I do for you?*"
"Your hunt for demons, how is it going?" Kal asked as he disappeared in the crowd as best he could with his stature.
"*We found a spike of appearances of lesser demons in England. We're starting to believe that's where the crack in space is located and it's widening,*" said the voice on the other end.
'Hmm... Thor... Convergence... Dark Elves?' Kal thought with narrowed eyes as he vaguely remembered the plot of the second Thor MCU movie that would give him access to a second Infinity Stone if he played his cards right. He should start stalking Doctor Jane Foster.
"I'll make my way to London after a quick meal. How is your training going?"
"*System says I'm level 59 now.*"
"Good going, Skye. Give my regards to Ava. See you two soon," Kal answered and hung up.
Daisy 'Skye' Johnson, or Quake, was the only Inhuman that Kal remembered from his MCU meta knowledge. And since Strucker wasn't in possession of the one item that could confirm their existence, the elf wanted to see if the hacker from Agents of SHIELD existed or not.
And she did. And just like Pietro and Wanda she was given three classes and four specializations when Kal granted her powers.
Mage's arcane, and frost profile, Rogue's subtlety profile and Druid's Balance profile were granted to her by the Mind Stone and his own powers.
He had expected her to get the Elemental Shaman profile if her original powers were taken into account, but that didn't happen.
Curiously enough, Ava Starr, or Ghost, whom he had met in New York during the battle of New York, was not given four profiles despite clearly being a powered individual like the twins and Quake. When she reached Kal in Malibu, the girl was granted the two Rogue profiles Assassination and Subtlety, as well as the Shaman profile Enhancement... which Kal honestly didn't get.
He had no idea where her talents for the class came from and could only chalk it up to weird quantum shenanigans. At the very least, having mana in her system stopped the woman from breaking apart so the second Ant-Man movie didn't need to happen for Ava to stop being in agonizing pain for the rest of her otherwise likely short life.
Together with several Stark satellites, Kal was able to find the general vicinity of other Legion demons this past year after the Ancient One pretty much told him to deal with it himself since that was what his powers were for.
As such, the exarch made his way toward England when nightfall came around and met up with his two most diligent proteges.
"Kal'thal!" Ava shouted and kneeled when the elf appeared in the comfortable base he had Stark buy for him in South London.
"I got you to stop calling me Master by spanking you. Are you really so eager for more since you don't stop with his kneeling stuff?" Kal sighed when he watched the woman kneel for him.
Ava was decked out in a perfect form fitting, light-weight armor he had ordered through Stark Industries and had two Vibranium daggers that Kal had enchanted with Superior Potency for added sharpness as well as Hurricane on one dagger to grant haste and Dancing Steel on the other to grant agility and strength during prolonged battles.
Being able to stack enchantments had been his newest achievement throughout the 'idle' year where he hadn't done much. So far, two spells on an item was his maximum, but it was a busted ability nonetheless.
"Yeah, I think Ava would like that," Skye quipped as she walked into the room and watched her friend's kneeling form. She stopped to go on her tiptoes and plant a small smooch on Kal's cheek before she walked over to Ava and helped her up.
"You're the reason I have purpose. You're why I am no longer in pain," Ava countered with a reverent gaze after she finally looked up.
"And you have repaid me plenty," Kal answered in Darnassian - a language both girls understood after prolonged exposure with the help of their barebones system.
"Have the twins reached out to you?" Kal asked as he patted Ava's head to calm her down. She was a little too fervent in her worship of him for his taste. He wondered why she wasn't chosen for a 'light' specialization with so much loyalty toward him, but chalked it up to her simply having no aptitude for it because quantum-tomfoolery might be more aligned with the void - the polar opposite of the light.
"Pietro called in several demons he dispatched in Europe," Ava immediately answered.
"So Wanda is still trying to be 'normal'? Why even ask for the powers then?" Kal mumbled with a small frown. "Was the revelation that Tony Stark, the object of her hatred, was not as guilty as she believed too much?"
After freeing a small village from demons near one of the northernmost coastal habitats of Italy where the two wanted to originally hide, Wanda stopped going out for 'heroics' and decided to use funds her brother would steal from criminals to build a gigantic privately funded orphanage for kids coming from wartorn countries.
Pietro, bless his soul, picked up all of her slack and was able to eradicate more demons than everyone else from their circle of powered people.
Not only was he a truly fearsome Demon Hunter by this point, Pietro had retained his original power of superspeed and combined his two power sets to become nigh unstoppable for the lesser demons they were fighting up until now.
With a shake of his head, Kal ordered Skye, "Show me a map with the demon activity."